


And They Struggled On

by farkenshnoffingottom



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Abuse, Episode: s05e04 The End, Gen, Introspection, POV Sam Winchester, Recovery, The Lord of the Rings References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:48:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21953200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/farkenshnoffingottom/pseuds/farkenshnoffingottom
Summary: "When it came time to make a decision, Sam told Dean he could beat Lucifer. He said he could stop the apocalypse and get things back to how they were. But when he was being honest with himself, in the hollowness of his own head, he knew that ‘how things were’ meant his destiny, his place as Lucifer’s vessel, finally back into the shape he’d grown unable to live without."~~After Lucifer, Sam's body feels too big with just him inside. He slowly learns to live with the space.
Kudos: 9
Collections: 2019 Supernatural & CWRPF Holiday Exchange





	And They Struggled On

**Author's Note:**

  * For [firealchemist18](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=firealchemist18).



> This is a gift for firealchemist18 for the spn_j2_xmas 2019 gift exchange! Thank you to Cali for beta reading. Any remaining mistakes are my own.
> 
> Gen, with implied background pining between Sam and Dean.
> 
> It’s been a few years since I’ve used a crisis hotline, so I’ve kept that discussion pretty vague in terms of what’s actually being said, and I'm not trained in any sort of recovery assistance. I’m just going off of my own experience here. The story itself is all pretty abstract, and there are no graphic depictions of abuse. There is a vague reference to suicide, but no one seriously considers it. Proceed at your own risk.
> 
> A brief TL;DR of Lord of the Rings is in the end notes. I quote the books and the movies, and there is some discussion of themes, but this fic should still make sense if you're unfamiliar with LotR. If something is confusing, please let me know, and I will clarify it.

“It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going, because they were holding on to something.”

“What are we holding on to, Sam?” 

“That there is some good in this world, and it's worth fighting for.” - _The Two Towers_

* * *

When Dean woke up in a strange and horrible future, it never once crossed his mind what the Sam in this future was going through. It was all about Sam, and yet none of it was. Sam was the one who said yes, the one who gave in. Dean was angry at Lucifer, and Zachariah, and all of Heaven. But this was a lesson for him, not for Sam. Sam was just a vessel, an empty husk, his being destroyed by Lucifer. Dean felt anger and grief, but never sympathy. With Lucifer in Sam’s body, Dean was in a world where Sam was already dead.

~~

Sam was not dead. He was in living Hell. He must be. He had been possessed before, had seen with a tint of _bad wrong no stop_ over everything. Meg had wanted him to shut up, had found his screams tedious. But Lucifer, he liked it. He kept Sam awake at all times, a passenger in his body, in his actions, able to scream only loud enough to echo through his skull and cause his head to ache. Lucifer kept up a stream of horrible, horrible words that would make Sam sick, if he had a body to be sick with. As it was, he felt hollow, or maybe too small, floating suspended in a room both endless and crushing. Sam watched as hundreds, thousands, fell at his hands. He watched the world burn around him, watched his body in the mirror, with someone else’s eyes staring back. Days blurred together, months, years... he didn’t know how long he had been awake. He was so bone-achingly tired. 

And then there was Dean. 

Dean had come for him.

Lucifer pulled Sam right up to the surface, pulled him back into his body from the void. He was in his limbs again, but he had no control. Lucifer laughed to feel him struggle, admonishing Sam inside his head, _how cute you are to think you can do anything I don’t want you to_. Sam was frozen in place, his body the wrong size, the fit of it _wrong wrong wrong_ overwhelming. And so Sam looked to Dean. Dean’s face, the same as he had ever known, but grotesque through Lucifer’s demonic lens.

And then Dean started to speak. Looking right at Sam, he said, “You’re the same brand of cockroach I’ve been squashing my whole life. An ugly, evil, belly to the ground, supernatural piece of crap.”

Sam couldn’t help but remember the other times Dean had said similar things to him. He’d called him a monster, and then again in the voicemail left by the angels but carrying his brother’s voice. And even worse, “You’re not you anymore, and there’s no going back.” 

He wasn’t him anymore, he could feel it in his bones, his tissues... But they weren’t really his anymore either. Could he still be himself in a body taken over by another? Lucifer pushed him back into the void, and Sam didn’t put up a fight.

~~

When Sam woke up, he had the oddest sensation, as of a dream that he couldn’t quite grasp but wouldn’t leave him be. He had the phantom sensation of skin, not his own, too big for his body with just himself inside. He could feel the space between his ears pounding deep and too strong, as if his head wanted to beat something out of it that had never really been there. The overall effect was a disorientation that would not clear. He felt stretched. His mind, his soul, his essence, whatever one might call it. It didn’t fit anymore. 

As the days went by, and Heaven and Hell pushed for the Winchester brothers to say yes, Sam was losing his grasp on why he was supposed to be saying no. Dean was firm in his convictions, but Sam couldn’t feel firm in his too-shaky soul anymore. 

Lucifer would come to him in dreams, sometimes, and Sam realized the feeling of wrongness that he felt in his waking body would disappear. Somehow, the world wasn’t right without Lucifer’s presence. Sam started to long for those dreams, where he could feel whole again. He couldn’t explain it to Dean, who wouldn’t understand anyway. Dean didn’t know what it was like to feel so wrong in his body the way Sam did. 

(Dean, of course, would argue that he did know, having been to Hell, but Sam would continue to insist they were different. Dean had pieces of himself taken away. Sam had himself stretched until he couldn’t be whole without someone, some _thing_ else. Dean would insist that _he_ could be that someone else. He would do it, for his brother, for the only thing he had left in the world. He would be everything he needed to be whole. And Sam, who had at one time longed for a world where Dean could be his, no longer felt that Dean could fill him. Maybe he was broken, but he knew what - who - he needed now, and it wasn’t Dean.)

When it came time to make a decision, Sam told Dean he could beat Lucifer. He said he could stop the apocalypse and get things back to how they were. But when he was being honest with himself, in the hollowness of his own head, he knew that ‘how things were’ meant his destiny, his place as Lucifer’s vessel, finally back into the shape he’d grown unable to live without.

* * *

“You and I, Sam, are still stuck in the worst places of the story, and it is all too likely that some will say at this point: ‘Shut the book now, dad; we don’t want to read any more.’”

“Maybe,” said Sam, “but I wouldn’t be one to say that.” - _The Two Towers_

* * *

When the apocalypse was over, and Cas had pulled Sam, minus his soul, out of Lucifer’s cage, Sam didn’t know what to do. He felt aimless, bigger even than he was with just Lucifer missing; now there was nothing. He was an empty shell, the pieces in him rattling around as in a pinball machine.

When he got his soul back, things still didn’t fit. Now, he felt like a stuffed bear with just a few wisps of cotton for insides, somehow maintaining its shape.

He could never feel right.

~~

He saved the world by saying yes. He knew that, and knew he would make the same decision again. But he had not come away unscathed, and he couldn’t find his place in the world anymore. He thought about Frodo, so fundamentally reshaped by his experiences that he could no longer live in peace in his old home. Frodo, who had felt the weight of the ring, as acutely as Sam felt Lucifer’s mass. Frodo had left Middle Earth for the Undying Lands, but Sam couldn’t leave. There was still work to do. There would always be more work to do.

If he kept fighting forever, there would never be an ‘after’ to not feel at home in. So instead of taking a break, he threw himself into action. He hunted, he fucked, he tried not to think how wrong everything felt.

So that others may keep living, Sam would give up his ability to live alongside them. 

* * *

“I have been too deeply hurt, Sam. I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me. It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: some one has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them.” - Frodo, _The Return of the King_

* * *

When the wall broke, with Lucifer back in his head, Sam felt closer to home than he’d been in a long while. 

He couldn’t sleep, and Lucifer came up with an endless stream of ways to torture his mind, but his body felt right. He had been so bent out of shape by Lucifer’s use of his body, and his mind welcomed him back, gladly ceded the space. He had not grown to love this pain, the stretch of immortal grace inside his human flesh. Yet, he found a strange comfort in it. If his hallucinations killed him, at least now he would die whole.

~~

After Cas took his memories, Sam finally decided to seek help.

Sam and Dean had been on a case in a college town when he saw a poster for an abuse hotline. It had those tear-away pieces with a phone number and website on the bottom. Sam stopped dead in his tracks, the world in front of him going out of focus for a moment. He had never thought about what Lucifer had done to him as abuse before, but the word itself elicited such a visceral reaction from him that he couldn’t ignore it. Sam glanced around to make sure Dean wasn’t looking before he ripped a tab off the poster and stuck it in his pocket. 

Later, in their motel room, he considered his options. He couldn’t call the hotline. For one thing, he wasn’t sure he was ready to say anything out loud. For another, he couldn’t risk Dean finding out how not-okay he really was. He wasn’t sure about the chat line either. What would he even say? It wasn’t like most people were abused by a supernatural being. He had a very distinct set of problems. He scrolled through some forums for a while, but quickly came to the conclusion that he couldn’t get through all of it on his own. 

He returned to the website and tentatively clicked on the chat button.

The person at the other end of the line introduced herself as Katie and asked for Sam’s name. He hesitated for a moment. Surely there was no risk in using his real first name. He took a deep breath and typed _Sam_.

 _Hi Sam_ , Katie wrote, _can you tell me what’s going on right now?_

So Sam started to talk. He said that he was being abused but never really had time to deal with what was happening, because there were always other things that needed his attention, and he couldn’t afford to be broken. But then he’d had a breakdown - the only way he could describe being haunted by Lucifer without revealing too much of the truth - and he realized that he had to face it eventually or it would kill him.

At that, Katie interjected to ask if he was in any current danger, and he looked at Dean sprawled out face down on his bed, at their motel windows lined with salt, at the duffel with guns and holy water they kept on them at all times, and the corner of his mouth lifted as he typed _I’m about as safe as I ever get, right now._

He stayed online with Katie for almost 30 minutes. She offered to point him to resources in his area, but he refused to tell her where he was, so she settled for sending him links to some good sites. She reassured him, saying that it wasn’t his fault, that recovery was possible, that he should be proud of himself for seeking help. He had seen all of those thoughts on the forums, but it felt different, somehow, when said directly to him. 

Then, when he finally admitted, in what would be a whisper if he were speaking, _Sometimes I miss him…_ , she told him that was okay, too. She told him that trauma changes people’s brain chemistry, and sometimes people return to abusive people or situations because they feel more familiar than safety, but that doesn’t make it their fault. Sam thought of the extra space inside of his skin, how he felt right in such a wrong way with his memories back, and he blew out a breath, shoulders slumping. He wanted to cry, but the tears wouldn’t come. Instead, he stared at the screen and focused on keeping his breathing even. He opened a few of the links Katie had sent him, thanked her, and put his laptop away.

He brushed his teeth and went to the bathroom, his body drifting through the familiar tasks without conscious thought. He got into his bed and lay staring up at the ceiling. He had a lot to think about. He wouldn’t say he felt better already, because he knew that wasn’t how it worked, but he did feel the slightest bit lighter from having said something. Talking to someone about it all had given him some measure of relief. Even if Katie didn’t know him or any of the details, he wasn’t the only one who knew anymore. 

He thought of Cas, who took on his burden to save him, and realized that he hadn’t been the only one before, either. Maybe he would talk to Cas about it someday. Maybe.

But right now, he could feel hope beginning to grow within him. He had taken the first step. His life wouldn’t get any less dangerous, what with catastrophes lurking around every corner, but he promised himself that he would start putting himself first. He would start trying to take care of himself. He would learn how to live with what had happened to him.

Again, his thoughts strayed to Frodo. He’d looked at his hurts and decided he would never heal. He would never be the same as he had been before, and he felt he had to move on. Sam had thought himself akin to Frodo. Maybe his own wounds were too deep, and they would never fully go away. Maybe he would feel Lucifer just as sharply years from now as Frodo felt the Witch King’s blade. 

But lying in the dark of a motel room just like the ones he’d been raised in, with the familiar rhythm of his brother’s breathing soothing his racing mind, he started to see a different way forward. Maybe the ache would fade, always there, but small enough to live with. And maybe he would find new joys, new ways of being in the world. He had had so much taken from him, forced upon him, left to fester in his blood, and not just by Lucifer. But he could make choices of his own. He felt strong enough in this moment to start down that path. 

He still felt warped, distended. Nothing but empty space. But he would begin to fill that space with good things. 

He would feel peace inside his own skin again, one day.

With that thought in his head and the flicker of hope in his heart, he drifted off to sleep.

* * *

“Do not be too sad, Sam. You cannot always be torn in two. You will have to be one and whole, for many years. You have so much to enjoy and to be, and to do.” - Frodo, _The Return of the King_

**Author's Note:**

> TL;DR: Frodo gets sent on a quest to bring the One Ring to Mordor to destroy it. The Ring wants to be found by Sauron and his servants, and it uses its magic to try to turn him to Sauron’s will. Samwise goes with him, but he doesn’t suffer the effects of the Ring because he only bears it for a day, whereas Frodo bears it for 6 months and is in possession of it for several years. Even after the Ring is destroyed, and he is safe, Frodo cannot ever heal. After a few years of trying to live in his home again, he decides to leave Middle Earth for the Undying Lands. The wizard Gandalf tells him, “There are some wounds that cannot be wholly cured,” and Frodo responds, “I fear it may be so with mine.” Sam (Winchester) references this quote in my fic, but otherwise I have quoted all other references.
> 
> Title is from the Return of the King: "And yet their wills did not yield, and they struggled on." The first quote is from the movies. The rest of the quotes are from the books.


End file.
